Game Over
by Lass Cherrie
Summary: WINNER of KO & Tomoyo's End of the World competition. / She was their last standing hope. The last warrior against the vicious slaughtering of mankind. And she was about to die.


**Jan 17, 2012.**

**Hi, reader.**

This one-shot was an entry for** Kitty Kat K.O. **and** Tomoyo Kinomoto's **End of the World contest (which I believe still has its own thread at the Free Imagination forum), the title of which was pretty self-explanatory. You just had to write a TMM-verse fic about the end of the world, or some such tragedy. This was my entry, and it really didn't take very long to write - something like an hour and a half? - which is impressive for a fic of this length. I don't write that fast anymore, sadly. Anyway, this baby was intended to blow your mind a bit, so if it did/does, that is a listed side-effect.

This entry actually won the contest - my first win ever! - so I'm pretty proud of it.

Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I do not (and did not) own Tokyo Mew Mew.

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**Game Over**

Written: August, 2009.

* * *

Time was running out.

She stood in the middle of the busy city square, her heart hammering in her chest, her senses heightened to their maximum strength. The four-way intersection was void of traffic; the civilians fleeing en masse were blocking the streets as they flooded in what they hoped desperately was the direction of safety, of peace.

A long line of cars streamed from the zebra crossings all the way through the city. Horns honked and blasted, filling the already loud streets with echoes of the drivers' frustration and impatience. Everyone was trying to escape, and they were all trying to escape at once.

Something exploded a few blocks back, and she spun on the spot, her eyes grazing the skyline for any sign of immediate danger. It seemed a corporation office had been targeted; black smoke was already billowing in hefty, fat clouds, sullying the once blue sky. The usually fluffy white clouds had long since been replaced with ugly, menacing covers of putrid grey – evidence of the havoc being wrecked upon Japan's most thriving city.

Her eyes fixed on the topmost floors of the burning skyscraper, her conscience torn between rushing to the aid of the people inside, or staying here where she could analyse everything from a central point, whilst protecting the swarms of city-dwellers swamping the tightly-packed roads. She couldn't be in two places at once. Her gut wrenched as she realised that she simply couldn't save everybody. There was only so much an adolescent superhero could do.

And as she stood there, torn between her options, the smoking skyscraper gave a great shudder, and with a long groan, collapsed in on itself. As the world had stood by, watching the Twin Towers collapse in America, she now witnessed the corporate office cave on its unstable foundations. A multitude of screams filled the air, just audible of the roaring of bricks and mortar showering down from the sky, crashing against the pavement. Her heart leaped up into her throat, pounding against the tense muscles of her neck, and her eyes began to water. All those lives she could have – should have – saved...

As thick clouds of dust drifted skywards between the still-standing skyscrapers, sirens started wailing. Flashing lights of fire trucks and police cars lit up the streets, reflecting off the bottommost windows of buildings as the rescue vehicles vainly attempted to force their way through the heavy congestion.

And all this time, the hideous forms of the enemy hovered far above them, surveying their handiwork from the safety of the skies.

Panic set in. She flicked her eyes from one twisted body to the next, watched as one of them took careful aim and fired a scorching hot beam of painfully red light at the tinted windows of the Mitsubishi Headquarters. With an ear-splitting crash, three rows of windows shattered, raining molten shards of glass down upon the streets. Screams of excruciation filled her ears as civilians flailed like frantic rats under a hot tin, pelted by the lethal hail. Her eyes squeezed shut before she could think; her brain had shifted to auto-pilot to save her from seeing the horrible aftermath of the assault, but her imagination was left to run wild. Images of charred flesh and melted skin rolled across her mind, unwanted but unstoppable. Bile rose up the back of her throat. The hair-raising shrieks plagued her ears, clogged her mind, so that all she could see, hear and think was the torture of humanity.

It was a desperate situation in which the outcome was a bleak yet solid failure. Had they the opportunity, or the hope, she knew the government would have called for support from some of the world's more powerful and technologically advanced nations. Their troops, restricted for so long from actively participating in any sort of warfare, were severely suffering; they were hugely outnumbered and in desperate need of firearms. She gritted her teeth in bitter resentment. It the U.N. had only granted them training of their forces sooner, they might have had a better chance of defending the country now...

It was all good and well for the American President to be untrusting of the Japanese Emperor and his politicians, after the disaster of World War Two, but when it came down to dire situations like this, a country needed to be able to defend itself. As a result of unnecessary over-precautions, Japan was ailing in battle; its cities blasted apart, its people mangled, its future tarnished.

But she couldn't stay resentful of the Americans, for it wasn't as though Japan was the only country under fire. Right now, she knew, having heard the frantic voices blaring through the radios of restaurants and service stations still in operation (and acting as safe-houses for the braver – or perhaps the idiotically stubborn – of society, the individuals determined to sit through the attack rather than flee the city) as she'd dashed past, the enemy had landed across the globe, targeting the majorly populated cities of the world's most influential nations.

Shanghai, Paris, London, New York, Mexico City, Calcutta, Mumbai, Los Angeles, Delhi... the list was endless, and yet, still growing. As seconds ticked by, the international death toll rose exponentially. The last she'd heard, it had hit seventy-eight million, and that had been at least half an hour ago. The enemy had finally landed, and had brought with it an age of death and destruction. An age in the history of humanity that could potentially mark the end of its existence altogether.

They were everywhere. And they were unstoppable.

A sizzling zap shot over her, narrowly missing her head. With a boom of epic proportions, the supermarket on the corner behind her exploded, and debris cascaded out over the intersection like a tidal wave of glass and cement. Without conscious thought, she leaped forwards into the air, sprang onto her hands and propelled herself further, sucking in a breath as the soft pads of her fingers raked against the asphalt and the skin was ripped away.

Landing roughly on her feet, she scrambled aside on her knees, grazing her legs as she dodged the hazardous rubble. Smoke filled her eyes, nose, and mouth, filling her lungs so that she choked for oxygen. Stinging tears poured from beneath her eyelids; her eyes blinded by the dust clouding the streets struggled to make sense of what was even happening anymore.

And over it all were the terrified screams. Always the screams, haunting her memory.

She dragged herself along the ruined sidewalk, her arms trembling from the effort of supporting her entire bodyweight. Struggling to her feet, she swayed dangerously to the side and retched in the gutter, expelling the meagre contents of her stomach. She whirled away from the road, determined not to remain in the same place for more than a few seconds, in case it blew up under her feet, and slammed into the harshly sturdy wall of a building.

The creature that had attacked her – for certainly that laser beam _had _been directed at her, one of Tokyo's remaining saviours – tailed her from above. Another sizzling zap, and a crater erupted in the sidewalk just to her right, smoking forebodingly at the edges. Concrete splayed everywhere; one chunk crashed against her leg, and it buckled on impact. She screamed before she could stop herself; with a nauseating crack, her shin split almost perfectly in two. Somehow, the snapped bone managed to avoid breaking through the skin, and she continued to drag herself away from the small yet deadly alien. It's unearthly rippling cackle could only be an expression of delight.

She forced herself onwards, ignoring her body's screaming protests to stop and rest. If she died now, without putting up a real fight, there would be no-one left to oppose these freaks. They'd always proclaimed their determination to protect the earth and its people; what kind of superhero would she be if she gave up now?

Her head reeling from the impact of smashing into the wall, and blinded by the excruciating pain of her mangled leg, she pulled herself into a narrow alley between two skyscrapers, taking refuge in the shadows hiding her from her pursuer. Gasping for breath, and smeared with sweat, ash and blood, she fumbled with trembling hands for the weapon lodged in the belt at her waist. Drawing it out with both hands, she licked her dry, cracked lips, lifted the small, shiny silver rod, and waited.

Almost on cue, as if this were an action movie, the gruesome creature zoomed into view, unsuspecting and overconfident. She aimed the rod, opened her mouth, and tried to form the words she knew would bring about its demise. Her tongue failed, but the weapon seemed to sense her intent; a glittering light exploded from the tip and hit the alien squarely in the chest. It froze mid-hover, like a shocked statue, before self-combusting, spraying mangled innards everywhere. She dropped her arm weakly and reached up with her other hand to wipe the transparent blue-purple blood from her face.

Without pausing to even catch her breath back, she clawed her way to her feet, stumbling further down the alley, limping heavily, her damaged, useless foot dragged painfully against the ground. A little way down, she discovered several wooden crates, which she ripped apart ruthlessly, oblivious to the pain in her hands as she shredded her nails and ripped away the skin of her knuckles, caught up in the adrenaline controlling her brain.

Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she selected two narrow planks of wood at random and strapped them to her calf with a filthy, ragged sheet discarded in a dumpster. Hardly stopping to check her makeshift splint, she continued on, bursting out into the sunlight at the other end of the alley. She found herself in a much-less crowded back street, and glanced either way, hoping to catch sight of something that might help discern where she was. The pointed red bars of Tokyo Tower rose out above the fingers of grey away to her left, and she stumbled along the street towards it, feeding out onto a main road and weaving through the now-abandoned cars idling in the lanes.

Three more aliens whizzed down from nowhere, and she disposed of them as she had the first; three quick blasts from her rod froze them in their places, and she ducked behind a bus as they exploded, splattering the far windows with gizzards. People running everywhere either screamed as she fought back against their enemy, or failed to notice her altogether. In a moment of crazed terror, the simple-minded human sees little but the road ahead, and searches only for the safest way to escape the threat of danger. She was betraying the natural human instinct of self-preservation in her tireless endeavours to destroy the aliens, and to those who did acknowledge her, this made her as foreign to them as the intergalactic race that was blowing up the city.

A little over half an hour later, many wreckage-dominated streets and just over a dozen slaughtered aliens later, she at last found herself gazing up at the rusted red iron arms of Tokyo Tower. On any other normal day, she could have made the trek to the landmark in under ten minutes. Her shattered leg was causing her more than just pain; it was slowing her down, and endangering her. Her reflexes were significantly slower now that she had to mind her broken bones.

How fitting it was, she thought bitterly, forcing her way through the locked entrance and dragging her leg up the steps into the foyer, that it should all come back to this place. As she struggled across the floor to the elevator, punching the button with a ruthless impatience, an ominous feeling of significance settled over her. There was an unsettling feeling of an approaching end in this place; one that was not in the slightest bit hopeful. That this place, the place where it had all started, really, should signify the end as well as the beginning, gave her an almost unrestrainable desire to laugh. The irony was ridiculous.

The elevators weren't working, it was apparent. Cussing angrily at this ill fortune, she stumbled to the metal staircase, beginning the exasperatingly slow, infuriatingly painful task of dragging herself up it.

It was be a long, hellish journey to the top of the tower, and she gripped the cold railing so tightly with her bloodied hands that the veins stuck out prominently under her skin. Her mangled knuckles and grazed fingers protested, stinging and burning with each pull, but she ignored the pain. She had to get to the top of the tower. It was her calling. Somehow, she just knew that it was what she was meant to do. Her final test, whatever it may be, would be awaiting her at the top of Tokyo Tower.

All the way up, she focused her gaze on the steps in front of her, determinedly ignoring the wide panels of glass beside her, through which, if she turned her head, she knew she would be able to gaze out over the city, sprawling away from her like a three-dimensional map. What she would see she could already imagine, but couldn't bring herself to accept just yet. She was sure that the multitude of the attack on her beloved city would crush whatever spirit she still had left; would destroy her will to continue to fight.

At long last, she burst through the door and stumbled across the cement roofing, arms and legs aching and trembling, beyond exhaustion both physically and mentally. She gazed directly upwards at the huge red beams twisting away into the sky like an oversized contraption of red pipe-cleaners. Stumbling across the roof to the railing, she took a deep breath, and finally permitted herself to gaze over her surroundings.

Destruction. Everywhere. Buildings had been damaged, some entirely destroyed. Skyscrapers that had once stood proudly, reaching into the heavens, now lay in mounds of concrete and metal. Scraps of mortar spilled across the streets, smoking and smouldering in the aftermath of their ruin. The remnants of what had once been a lively, modern city brought hot tears to her eyes.

But the bodies made them spill over.

Everywhere she looked, people littered the roads, lifeless and still as dolls. The entire city seemed to be covered in splatters of rich red blood; it was smeared across windows, pooled in puddles on the roads. Bodies swam in rings of red; it trickled down the gutters, mixing with the gushing water of several burst water mains. It sickened her, but she couldn't turn away.

This was Tokyo. This was her world. Her home. Her face clouded with anger. This was the result of the ambition of an uncompassionate species determined on ruining the world they'd become comfortable in. This nightmare she was living meant nothing to them. Once they finished their conquest and destroyed what remained of human civilisation to claim the earth as the next little trophy of their domination, the bodies would be little more than the piles of rubble littering the land. An entire race of living, breathing creature, wiped from existence, rendered little more than a ghostly memory.

Even then... would anybody actually remember them? Or would the human being merely fade away, forgotten, as though they had never even existed?

Her eyes darkened. How dare they? How dare they intrude upon their world? How dare they be so ignorant to the pain of the species they were so heartlessly annihilating?

She drew herself up to her full height, grabbed the railing with shaking fingers, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Her shriek echoed across the city, a long, agonised wail, the personification of the pain and terror felt worldwide by a tortured, dying race.

She didn't stop, even after her lungs felt as though they would explode.

At last, she collapsed against the railing, gasping for breath, tears pouring like rivers down her grimy, blood-streaked cheeks. Through blurred eyes she watched the forms of her enemy multiplying around the tower. They'd heard her, all right. And now it was time for her to die.

_Don't give up..._

_We're here..._

The voices were clear in her mind, as though someone was standing right beside her, whispering in her ear. Soft and angelic, they reminded her of all things pure and golden; they were light and soft, like feathers.

It was instinct that forced her to shift her limbs and turn around. Still gripping the railing for support, she moved in a small circle until her back was to the sprawling city.

Four figures, ghostly transparent, yet so clear in definition that they were instantly recognisable, had materialised behind her, and stood, waiting patiently, as if it were their calling. Her breath caught in her throat; her heart stopped.

"Are... are...?"

_Yes... _

"You... f-fell?" she stammered, shock dizzyingly strong, like a hit to the head.

One of the girls inclined her head with a small, sorrowful smile.

_We're so sorry..._

"N-no," she gasped, tears still falling thick and fast, though unnoticed. "You f-fought hard..."

They were dead. They were all dead. She was the only one left.

It only made her hate them more.

_We're here for you..._

_We want to help you..._

"H-how?" she stammered, her heart sinking lower and lower in her chest. Was there really any reason to keep fighting now? Humanity was doomed. Life as they knew it would never be the same. Their world was gone. Destroyed. And they were dead. They were all... dead. Her best friends. Her team mates.

Dead.

_Trust us..._

_Don't give up..._

_Keep fighting..._

"I... I c-can't," she whispered. "I have..."

_Nothing left to fight for...?_ one of them guessed, a small smile playing around her lips.

_You have your life..._

_You have your freedom..._

_You have everything we stood for..._

She had _everything_ to fight for, in other words.

She blinked and swallowed once, hard. Then she pushed off the wall, determination burning in her eyes. If she was going to die, she wasn't going without a fight. If she was going to die now, then she was taking as many of them with her.

"Come and get me!" she screamed wildly. "Come and fight me, you _freaks_!"

She staggered exhaustedly to the middle of the concrete roof, her ghostly companions stalking peacefully beside her. They formed a tight circle around her, flanking her from all sides like gentle, transparent shields.

And out of nowhere, they appeared. At least a dozen of them, hovering like ugly, menacing bats, skeletal and wingless, their flaxy skin drawn tightly over their spindly bones. They soared down out of the sky and formed a wide circle, their beady eyes fixed on the sole target standing defiantly before them. She glared back with as much loathing as she could possibly muster.

Then one of them chirped, and they all raised their right hands, preparing for the cumulative attack that would destroy her, like so many before her.

She tensed, wondering when to strike. Too early, and she wouldn't have a chance before one of them got her first. Too late, and it would be over before it even began.

And while she was estimating, one of them fired.

Before she could even reflexively flinch, the scorching beam shot towards her. A strange, languid sizzle –static, yet dull – fizzled across the rooftop, and to her surprise, the beam ricocheted away from her. White light radiated over the cement... and _she_ was the epicentre. She blinked, shocked, and glanced around.

Her four fallen teammates encircled her, their backs to her, their hands joined, staring with transparent, emotionless eyes at the enemy surrounding them. Like pillars of lucid power they created a protective wall around her, and she suddenly understood. This was their last pledge to her, to what they had been; they were sacrificing their souls – the last remaining link between earth and the afterlife – to protect her rapidly weakening human body; the last hope for a dying species.

Tears slid down her face before the heavy, crushing pain could even register in her mind.

Astonishment at the failure of the attack quickly turned to outrage. Those beady eyes glinted with malice and determination. She could almost read their tiny minds; _how dare she defy us? _

They raised their hands. She clenched her weapon.

A hundred brilliant red beams fired at once, careening towards her from every angle. From the pavement below the colossal explosion of red and white light would have been as powerful as the sun, such was the magnitude of the two colliding powers.

Almost immediately, she realised that this was it. This was her one chance, while she was protected from their rays, to hit back; to leave a mark. To take a stand against the monstrosity of this slaughtering of humanity.

She raised her arm, trembling with rage and exhaustion, and fired.

And fired, and fired, and fired.

She twisted and turned, blasting the hideous creatures out of the sky like she was in some kind of sick video game. They dropped like flies; anger filled every fibre of her being, propelling her forward with a kind of tireless, manic intensity. In her rage, her eye was precise, her aim was true, her arm was strong. The rod beneath her fingers shook violently as she pushed it to its very limits. Blast after blast erupted from its tip, so that the sky became a blaze of dancing beams, red versus sparkling white.

But even as they fell en masse, their places were refilled. And though her determination, her ferocity burned eternally, her endurance waned. Her body began to protest and falter; each blast sent jarring pain up through her shoulder so that she recoiled with each shot. Like a ragdoll she flailed, her muscles searing, her bones aching, blinded by pain, and yet the enemy still fell.

At last, the pure white barrier began to weaken, slowly fading as the red beams lashed relentlessly, pummelling against its protective embrace. Inside the bubble, her knees trembled and caved; she crashed to the ground and sat swaying, still firing desperately though she knew the end was near. How many breaths did she have left? A hundred? Fifty? Ten?

She lifted her dazed eyes in time to watch the barrier waver and flicker. It was coming. Death. It was moment away... each pounding heartbeat reminded her of how much she had lost. How much she hadn't experienced. How short her life had been cut. And for what? To watch her friends and family murdered at the hands of a race incapable of feeling anything but their programmed urge to kill.

She filled her lungs as much as she could, until she felt they would explode like a balloon. She let her eyes slide shut and against the black of her eyelids she watched the memories of a happier time scroll like clips from a film, or images on a projector. She held her breath until her chest ached and the tears poured down her cheeks. The air slipped from between her lips in a slow sigh that dragged all the pain, the hurt, the tortured images from her as her body exhaled. Lifeless as a doll and empty as a sack, she summoned the last ounce of energy remaining, and opened her eyes.

The barrier flickered, and vanished.

A hundred needles of blistering red pierced her skin in less than one heartbeat, and she slumped.

* * *

**Game Over**

* * *

"Nooooooooooooo!"

Ichigo slammed the control down in frustration and stood up.

"You lose, baka," Ryou said lazily, smirking languidly from the sofa. He watched her stomp around with brilliant azure eyes, and lifted his arms up behind his head, resting against the cushions.

Ichigo glared at him. _Look at him, sitting there like the emperor of Japan! Ooh, he's so smug and cocky! I could... I could just_–

"So that's..." Ryou trailed off, feigning deep thought to drag out her infuriation at having been beaten at a video game. "One hundred and three, to three hundred and eighty-seven."

"So?" Ichigo snapped, red-faced from irritation and humiliation.

"Looks like you'll be here every night until July thirty-one," Ryou smirked. "Gosh that's tough."

"Yes, it is," she replied loudly. "I can't think of _anyone _mean enough to actually impose that on their poor, innocent employee."

She glared at him pointedly. He shot her an insufferable smirk.

"I can't think of anyone stupid enough to challenge their older, smarter and clearly more superior boss to a video game competition," he replied. "In which the losing price is to work late _every night_ for two months."

She growled at him.

"I didn't lose!" she cried. "I–"

"You didn't make it past the Tokyo Tower roof," Ryou cut across her flatly. "You lost. And you didn't even kill _half _as many aliens as I did. Now, if I'm not mistaken, you have a bet to work off."

His lips stretched into a charming smile when her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.

"You can start with the windows. They're in serious need of a good, long polish."

She shrieked and stomped from the room, her red pigtails whipping over her shoulders, her loud, whiny complaints echoing throughout the now silent, once peaceful café.

Ryou sat back again with a highly satisfied sigh.

"Give it a rest, Strawberry," he called lightly. "It's not the end of the world."

**Fin.**

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**Afterword**

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Hah! Did I fool anyone?

Bet you all thought the story was over with the second 'Game Over'. But NO! There was more! ;P

Thanks for reading!


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